Free Lecture Dives Into Sinking Wall Street

Dr. David Newton, professor of entrepreneurial finance at Westmont and president of TechKnowledge Point, discusses the current economic meltdown in a special session of Tuesdays with Morals Wednesday, Oct. 22, at 3:30 p.m. in Westmont’s Page Multi-Purpose Room. The lecture, “Crisis Mode: How Freddie, Fannie, and Financial Engineering Changed Wall Street Forever,” is free and open to the public.

“The 2008 mortgage crisis permeates every analysis of the current U.S. economic malaise,” Newton says. “Commentators have blamed everybody from unethical lenders, to over-generous Fed monetary policy, to a cyclical real estate bubble, and, of course, greedy Wall Street firms.”

Newton says he will also discuss whether taxpayers should get stuck with the bill for the various proposed clean-ups.

The Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge honored Newton last March with one of the 31st Annual Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Awards for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education. Newton launched the Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (S.E.E.D.) National Collegiate Venture Forum in 2003, which is held every year in Santa Barbara.

Tuesdays with Morals, sponsored by the Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts, is a weekly discussion series that invites the campus community to wrestle with morally complex issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.